Mary Wambui Kuria (Meeri) was a young girl attending Kiamwangi School in Gatundu when the State of Emergency was declared. Her life was suddenly turned upside down as her father, the bread winner, was beaten to the point of incapacitation and she had to take on his role at a tender age. On the day the declaration was made, her school, which had been started by Africans opposed to the banning of circumcision of Kikuyu girls by the missionaries, had been surrounded by the military, who ordered it closed indefinitely and with immediate effect. She tells of the brave men who, two decades before Mau Mau, had defied the missionaries and decided to pursue Kikuyu culture and modern education at the same time. Naming them one by one, she tells of how they had started the African Independent Churches, which built schools on a self-help basis around the Mt. Kenya region. The schools they built were taken over by the government and the missionaries without compensation to the community that had built them, and, in a case of clear miscarriage of justice, some schools have never reverted back to the original sponsoring church - the African Independent Pentecostal Church of Africa (AIPCA). The issue of circumcision drove a deep wedge in Kikuyu society, echoes of which can still be heard today in the Mburi cia Kiama (traditional Kikuyu ritual goat sacrifice) practice that is vehemently opposed by some churches. She says that the Mau Mau oath had roots in the 1920s and that is when it had been decided by the elders that they would resist colonial rule. #kenya #africa #africanhistory #africanindependence #aipca #africanchristianity #africanchurch #maumau
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LINK BETWEEN KIKUYU CIRCUMCISION, MISSIONARIES AND MAU MAU - MARY WAMBUI KURIA
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